[HN Gopher] China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000
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China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000
Author : zdw
Score : 130 points
Date : 2026-03-25 20:55 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kdwalmsley.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kdwalmsley.substack.com)
| srean wrote:
| What seems to be the problem with their S300 clones? Anyone knows
| ? Easy to jam I suppose.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| S300 is very good AA, but in practice modern SEAD with a
| sizeable number of planes can outrange them and they're not
| great at protecting themselves. We saw this in India-Pakistan
| and seeing this again in Iran-USA. You can see more of a stale
| mate when they aren't getting outranged in Ukraine-Russia.
| srean wrote:
| I am talking about the Chinese clones, not the original (is
| there a difference ?).
|
| As you mention they did not fare very well in the India-
| Pakistan conflict.
| esseph wrote:
| Air defense works in layers where each layer often covers for
| another. S300 is good, but it's just one piece of a useful anti
| air defense strategy.
| torginus wrote:
| There's no 'S-300' as such, there are sets of fire control,
| target acquisition and tracking radars, and various types of
| missiles, each of which can be upgraded, and mixed and matched
| to some degree, with some combinations being up to the S-300
| standard or better.
|
| The closest thing to a standardized variant is the one
| installed on ships.
|
| It's a crazy variety of hardware out therem and one of the most
| dangerous things about SAMs, that a lot of the old Soviet
| missile stock is passively guided, so pairing a decades old
| missile sitting in storage with a state of the art radar makes
| it relevant even today.
| code_biologist wrote:
| Chat, is this real? I've seen this guy pop up on youtube. I
| assume he's a Chinese state mouthpiece as he's a westerner in the
| mainland with a very pro-China spin (substack recommended the
| other posts below), but I'm curious how strong the factual basis
| for this reporting is.
|
| _China 's factories are in another world - Mar 23, 2025_
|
| _Chinese factories build fire trucks for under $400,000 in six
| weeks. In the US, it 's $2 million in 4 years - Apr 19, 2025_
|
| _Iran is blowing up $500 million radars. China 's export bans
| mean they are gone forever. - Mar 16, 2026_
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| There's a few of these guys that make posts about technology
| that doesn't materialize after a few years, they can be
| ignored. There are plenty of pro-China observers that offer
| grounded analysis of Chinese military-industrial base out there
| that don't make claims that China has unobtainium technology.
| /r/LessCredibleDefence has a shortlist of these propagandists.
| fooker wrote:
| Yeah it's certainly unimaginable that the civilization that
| invented gunpowder, cannons, guns, rockets a thousand years
| ago can make it for cheap now :)
|
| 'Hypersonic' missile makes it sound like it's alien
| technology, no it's solid boosters that do not follow the
| usual ballistic trajectory with a computer from 1970.
|
| The raw materials cost less than half of a standard car.
| esseph wrote:
| "no it's solid boosters that do not follow the usual
| ballistic trajectory"
|
| Hypersonics do not. They are extremely fast and extremely
| low flying.
| justin66 wrote:
| I've only read a few short blurbs about this. What makes
| you think the booster doesn't follow a normal ballistic
| trajectory?
| sgc wrote:
| That's pretty much the entire point of what people are
| calling hypersonic missiles. All ballistic missiles fly
| at hypersonic speeds. The advance is being able to do so
| at low altitude with maneuverability.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Good question. I think China is undoubtedly far better than the
| US at advanced, cheap mass-production. So wouldn't be
| surprising they could do that for the military too. Not to say
| the US couldn't get better.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| Better than the US at producing almost anything at this
| point. There are a few tiny islands of advantage left for the
| US in advanced engineering but they won't last.
|
| Prediction: China will win the new race to the moon for this
| very reason.
| bamboozled wrote:
| This is basically what made the USA a military super power in
| the first place? At least it's what made them so powerful
| during WW2 and I guess beyond.
| nclin_ wrote:
| You don't have to assume: He seems to provide ample detailed
| western sources to back up his claims in every video.
|
| Perhaps it'd be more difficult for him to broadcast if he had
| an anti-china perspective, but the content itself seems
| legitimate.
| kube-system wrote:
| China does keep close tabs on foreign bloggers in their
| country (especially over the past decade or so), and anything
| remotely nonpositive does get people visits from police or
| worse. There is a huge chilling effect, even for people who
| mostly do have positive things to say.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _He seems to provide ample detailed western sources to back
| up his claims in every video_
|
| Does he? The only sources seem to be a CNSpaceflight tweet
| from last november of a promo animation from the missile
| company, and a South China Morning Post article that is just
| quoting commentators on Chinese state TV talking about the
| the possible capabilities of the missiles.
|
| The other sources (someone else's substack that's sourced
| from a December article[1] from The Independent, and two
| articles on "interestingengineering") all just quote the same
| animation and commentators.
|
| [1] https://www.the-independent.com/asia/china/china-
| hypersonic-...
| creantum wrote:
| If they're half as good as the robot I saw today in china
| slapping that kid id get a few
| exabrial wrote:
| Real or not, this is probably the future. Lockheed execs want
| combat to be a distant exchange of multi-million dollar missiles.
| As shown in Ukraine, people actually fighting for their lives
| will wreck a $300million weapon with a slingshot.
| jollyllama wrote:
| So, a return to cold-war style missile races, except there are
| actual slugfests from time to time because the nuclear threat
| no longer has gravity.
| epistasis wrote:
| I think it's led to a huge advantage for defenders. Nuclear
| weapons favor attackers, or deterrence. But massive drone
| waves allow defense of large areas with a very small number
| of people. It's not a race to build bigger missiles that go
| longer distances and are harder to shoot down, it's largely a
| coordination, communication, logistics, and information
| management problem.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Hypersonics would not appear to be definitively offensive
| or defensive.
| wahern wrote:
| Not hypersonic, but there are upstart defense companies
| building and selling these types of low-cost weapons. See,
| e.g., Anduril's $200,000 Barracuda:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda-M
|
| Big firms like Lockheed nominally have similar products in the
| pipeline. See, e.g., https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-
| us/news/features/2025/cmmt... Though given how long they've
| been in development one wonders if they're slow walking these
| things until competition forces them to commit.
|
| I don't really follow the defense industry, but I imagine
| building cheap missiles isn't that hard. Rather, the difficult
| and expensive aspect would likely be the systems integrations
| (targeting, tracking, C&C, etc), especially in a way that let's
| the military rapidly cycle in new weapons without having to
| upgrade everything else. OTOH, if and when that gets truly
| fleshed out, firms like Lockheed might start to lose their
| moat, so there's probably alot of incentive to drag their feet
| and limit integration flexibility, the same way social media
| companies abhor federated APIs and data mobility. And if
| integration is truly the difficult part, I'm not sure what to
| make of weapons like the YKJ-1000 or Barracuda. Without the
| integration are they really much better than $100 drones?
| epistasis wrote:
| > wreck a $300million weapon with a slingshot.
|
| I don't think "slingshot" is the right analogy here. There is a
| big change towards intelligent, small, and cheap drones. If it
| were just a slingshot, other countries could pick up what
| Ukraine is doing in no time, but they can't. Instead, there's
| an absolutely massive industry behind Ukraine's drone
| manufacturing, growing at 2x per year, which no other nation
| can currently match, including Russia.
|
| The drone manufacturing has gone so exponential that they now
| have a shortage of drone operators. It's completely changed the
| war in the past few months, with Russia now losing ground, at
| basically zero additional Ukrainian casualties, and with Russia
| continuing to have massive ground casualties from sending
| poorly trained troops to die while hiding in a 30 mile wide
| kill zone ruled by drones.
|
| The quantity of drones allows new tactics, reminiscent of
| rolling wave artillery. And deployment of a wide variety of
| types of drones has led to the depletion of Russian anti-air
| defense in both occupied Ukraine and in Russia itself, allowing
| the destruction of much of Russia's oil infrastructure. The
| recent Baltic port hit will be felt for a long long time, and
| nearly completely neutralizes the lifting of sanctions on
| Russia. All from novel weapons, which are decidedly more
| sophisticated than slingshots both in their construction and
| application. And the US is way behind, and too proud to let
| Ukraine share their knowledge and capabilities.
| bigiain wrote:
| > I don't think "slingshot" is the right analogy here.
|
| I think it's perfect - a very valid "David vs Goliath"
| reference.
| epistasis wrote:
| Ah, I hadn't thought of that sort of slingshot! I was
| thinking more "primitive rock throwing."
| zer00eyz wrote:
| There is also a cost aspect of it as well.
|
| The long range drones that are being shot down are the
| "expensive products" of a military industrial complex.
|
| The US solution to this problem is even more expensive.
|
| For the cost the Ukraine's solution might as well be a
| rock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(drone)
| larkost wrote:
| Note that it is wrong to think that David was at a
| disadvantage. I know that is not how the story is taught
| today, but slingshot troops of that age we the snipers of
| their age: very deadly (not at the range of a modern
| sniper, but...).
|
| If the fight between them was started at some distance, the
| David should have been the expected winner by pretty much
| everyone on the field. Think "bright a club to a gun fight"
| sort of vibes.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| You're talking about the hardware. That is critical.
|
| But what's evolving even faster is the software. And in real
| world use cases.
|
| They arent paying for tank models and people to run around
| and try to chase to "test". They are very literally doing it
| live, with live fire testing day in and day out.
|
| Furthermore they are rewarding results on both ends.
| Successful operators get to buy gear for kills in an amazon
| like store (talk about gamification). And there are paths for
| "innovation" to make its way to the front quickly: see
| https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/how-a-ukrainian-
| gam... for an example.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > If it were just a slingshot, other countries could pick up
| what Ukraine is doing in no time, but they can't. Instead,
| there's an absolutely massive industry behind Ukraine's drone
| manufacturing, growing at 2x per year, which no other nation
| can currently match, including Russia.
|
| I'm all for good guys winning, but what are your sources? And
| why do you think Russia can't match Ukraine in this regard?
| tartoran wrote:
| I think whatever advantage Russia has (size and resources)
| is being squandered by corruption and incompetence.
| epistasis wrote:
| There's no single source, it's basically all the war
| reporting. My claims are not contentious. Even Russia's war
| bloggers are repeating the same now.
|
| Russia could, in theory, use it's greater number of people
| towards producing drones. But it hasn't. Russia could, in
| theory, train its new recruits properly before throwing
| them into hopeless situations. But it hasn't. Russia could,
| in theory, operate by rewarding production contracts to the
| most capable teams rather than the ones with the best
| connections. But it hasn't. And even if Russia does,
| they'll have to catch up. They could!
|
| Even the US could, in theory, start learning from Ukraine
| or even following in its footsteps, independently, but it
| hasn't.
|
| Ukraine is fighting for its life, it's on Death Ground, in
| the terms of Sun Tzu. In Russia, perhaps only Putin is on
| Death Ground, and even then, there's many ways Putin could
| give up on the war and still stay in power. That produces
| far different results in people. And the cultures of
| Ukraine and Russia are fundamentally incompatible, which
| also produces very different results from people.
| papa0101 wrote:
| absolute drivel, zero-substantiated, zero-value.
| torginus wrote:
| Yeah, there's the Flamingo, Ukraine's cruise missile that uses
| old turbofan engines near the end of the service lives. But
| Ukrainians mentioned, that they're looking to mass produce low-
| cost engines using steel for their blades instead of exotic
| alloys, as used on most aircraft engines. Of course even
| advanced steel alloys cant survive the close to 1000C temps for
| long, but a cruise missile needs to fly for like 3-4 hours, not
| thousands. Probably a lot else can be simplified in the design,
| as turbofans are conceptually very simple, much simpler than
| ICE.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| If they're that cheap they can probably afford to cry wolf with
| them. Get people used to seeing unarmed missles flown in to
| random places, where the possible damage doesn't justify trying
| to shoot them down, then suddenly start putting explosives
| onboard.
| sailfast wrote:
| Do they hit their targets? Eventually with enough of them it's
| not super important but... it does matter a bit.
| Loughla wrote:
| According to the Google search I just did, an average American
| hypersonic missile costs between 13 and 41 million dollars.
|
| So that is between 131 and 410 of these. At that rate, and with
| enough disdain for my enemy and apathy for their people, I can
| just launch a shit load of them in the right direction and
| cross my fingers.
| serf wrote:
| the concept of 'The average hypersonic..' makes me laugh.
|
| in actuality the concept of equating real life dollars to
| defense budgets makes me laugh, too. It's not really a money
| thing, it's a production thing; and even if it were to be
| considered as a money thing the values involved in no way
| reflect a real life value.
|
| It's like the NASA hammer story/packard commission. They're
| not going to say no to a 435 dollar hammer versus a zillion
| dollar project, but _it 's not actually a 435 dollar
| hammer.._ .
|
| Similarly a 41 million dollar weapon only costs that much
| until a wartime powers clause forfeits your factory to state
| production..
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Do they hit their targets?"
|
| Are you sure you want to find out?
| supermdguy wrote:
| > Nobody knows yet the true capabilities of the missile, but it
| doesn't matter. The accuracy doesn't matter very much, the
| payload doesn't matter very much. If it's launched at a certain
| target in Tel Aviv, it still is going to hit something in Tel
| Aviv. The Israelis have no choice but to attempt an intercept,
| and will spend millions to do so
|
| Sounds like the massive price disparity more than makes up for
| any accuracy issues
| irishcoffee wrote:
| Clearly accuracy does matter. I just tried to throw a rock
| from my back yard to Tel Aviv, I missed terribly.
| 0x4e wrote:
| Amazing! Yet another life destroying invention. What could go
| wrong?
| ck2 wrote:
| when China take Taiwan there's not a single thing the world is
| going to be able to do about it
|
| they use thousands of fishing boats to practice blockades
|
| they are building massive oil reserves and getting most of
| population into electric vehicles
|
| let's just hope they wait to next decade and not like 2028
| yogibear678142 wrote:
| People thought the same on Iran, untouchable. China has the
| same air defense and tech as Iran, not effective in real world
| situations.
|
| Blockades go both ways. China is energy dependant so very
| vulnerable to blockade response by the US and Japan. A few
| choke points make it easy, the ocean is not open ended.
| eunos wrote:
| > China has the same air defense and tech as Iran
|
| Lmao, quantitatively and qualitatively China is more than an
| order of magnitude bigger
| dragonelite wrote:
| Well to this day China is getting Iranian energy. This naval
| blockade is a relic of a past long gone. When you have eyes
| in the sky and pin point accurate missiles. The US can't even
| block or free the straight of Hormuz.
|
| Also China is friendly with Russia they have land border so
| they can build pipelines.
| epistasis wrote:
| Attacking and occupying a distant island in this age is getting
| more difficult, not easier. Look at the Black Sea, where
| Russia's remaining ships cower in fear in port, as they try to
| avoid super cheap marine drones. Massive missile attacks on a
| country can only do so much damage, and they harden the
| population against the aggressor.
|
| If Taiwan has been paying attention, and I don't doubt they are
| in an age when it's becoming clear the US is a paper tiger that
| will never protect them, they are well prepared to handle a
| good chunk of their own defense, using the brain trust they
| have inside their nation. They have everything they need for
| their own defense now.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Damn, can you imagine how quickly Aliexpress orders are gonna
| arrive now?
| FpUser wrote:
| >"A Chinese company is in production of a hypersonic missile,
| with a sticker price comparable to that of a luxury sedan"
|
| Well they've perfected manufacturing at scale. I see no surprise
| here.
| janalsncm wrote:
| This is what people should keep in mind when the statistic about
| US defense spending being higher than the next N nations combined
| or whatever it is now. If I buy a 30k Prius, and you spend 300k
| on a different car,
|
| 1) that doesn't mean you can drive 10x as fast and
|
| 2) maybe you just bought an overpriced Prius, perhaps a gold
| plated one
|
| This is a more general problem in politics, where the overall
| budget being allocated is reported rather than the practical
| result.
| torginus wrote:
| Yeah, you often read stories on the internet about how the
| SR-71 could easily outrun the MIG-25, proving US technological
| superiority, but those don't really take into account that
| there was like a dozen made of the former, with titanium hulls
| and exotic engineering. While there were more than a thousand
| made of the cheap, steel hulled MIG 25
| vsgherzi wrote:
| These don't seem comparable to me. The sr 71 was never meant
| to be mass produced or to head to head against a mig. The
| sr71 didn't even have any guns it's a spy plane. The sr 71
| accomplished its goal with flying colors and spotted nuclear
| test sites and information on the Cuban missle crisis.
|
| The star fighter, or f15 or f22 would be more apt.
|
| TLDR special purpose tool vs general fighter cannot be
| compared
| nxm wrote:
| During the Cuban Missle Crisis it was the U2, not the sr-71
| serf wrote:
| It's a false comparison.
|
| How many MIG-25s flew over the borders of the United States
| mainland during the cold war?
|
| Yes the MIG-25 was a cheaper and more practical plane, but
| that wasn't the MO of the sr71.
| torginus wrote:
| I am not the one making those. If you read an article about
| how a Lamborghini Aventador was faster than a Nissan GT-R,
| you would go 'well, duh, it costs 20x as much'.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| There were 32 SR-71s, 13 A-12s and 2 M-21s. That's 47 total I
| believe, making your figure off by about 300%, which
| incidentally is how much cooler the SR-71 is relative to the
| Mig, on account of it looking incredibly exotic and elegant
| instead of like a pointy sky tractor. Being faster is just
| icing on the cake.
| blitzar wrote:
| Your figure of 300% is off by orders of magnitude for how
| much cooler the SR-71 is at 60 years of age than
| practically anything else that exists.
| calgoo wrote:
| Or they bought a lambo, which is amazing, and goes really
| fast... but when you are out of gas, the Prius will keep going.
| :)
| magicalist wrote:
| This is blogspam based on a tweet of the company's promo video[1]
| in November and some speculation by a guy on Chinese state TV[2].
| As far as I can find there's no evidence since then that these
| have entered production, mass or otherwise. It was doubted at the
| time they could hit these costs in production, and there hasn't
| been any news since.
|
| [1] https://xcancel.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1993158707056984359
|
| [2] https://archive.is/VLO7U
| jsw97 wrote:
| Yes. I have no idea if this is technologically plausible at
| this point but it doesn't make sense strategically. Why would
| China allow something this dangerous and IP-intensive to be
| commercialized? We don't sell our nuclear weapons tech, for
| example. (I assume.) And the thought that they would want this
| in the hands of unstable actors, however they are currently
| aligned, is a little silly. This feels more like a mistake,
| possibly even a scam.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| Pakistan invests in chinese air -defenses- gets steamrolled by
| india. Iran buys chinese air-defenses- gets steamrolled by Israel
| and the Us. Russia claimed the s400 was all the rage- and its
| going nowhere in ukraine. If propaganda claims where a currency,
| could you buy anything with all this?
| andriy_koval wrote:
| air defense is much more complicated and difficult to build.
|
| Iranian cheap drones/cruise missiles are efficient from another
| hand.
| mpweiher wrote:
| I see your $99,000 missile and I raise you a $10 intercept.
|
| Time for those laser-defenses to come up to speed.
| torginus wrote:
| Lasers have very limited applications, they have an inherent
| line of sight limits, and even the most powerful ship mounted
| lasers that can do like 50kW, take a minute to boil a kettle of
| water away, more if you wrap it in tinfoil.
|
| And a shot might cost $10, the laser itself cost $$$, fits only
| in a cargo container, and requires crazy amounts of juice.
|
| Meanwhile a simple AA gun needs none of those things and can
| kill things just fine.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Lasers will probably only be used for point defenses against
| drones which isn't useless but they aren't the cheap future
| panacea everyone seems to think.
| larkost wrote:
| At this point no one is talking about using lasers to defend
| against hyper-sonic missiles (at least not anywhere near the
| target). All of the current laser systems require being focused
| on the targets for some amount of time to "burn though", which
| means they are only suitable for lower-speed targets (drones,
| cruise missiles, and some low-level ballistics).
|
| You would need to have significantly stronger lasers to try and
| "burn through" on something moving that fast.
|
| For completeness I should mention that there was quite some
| work on trying to get laser defenses against ballistic missiles
| on their "boost" phase (when they were launching, so slow
| enough to track a point in the missile), for example George
| Bush's "Star Wars" defense system. These would have been space
| based (some of the testing involved mounting on 747s, but I
| don't think that was ever an end-goal), but never made it near
| production.
| piskov wrote:
| You think of laser as in star wars cutting light saber.
|
| Actual lasers don't do shit at those distances: it is used not
| to cut something in half but to blind, damage sensors, and what
| have you
| beloch wrote:
| Whether these claims are real or not, they do illustrate one of
| the crazy things about technological progress. Capabilities that
| are difficult for states to develop eventually become something
| corporations can easily implement, and from there they become
| affordable for private citizens, first to buy, and then to DIY.
|
| Two obvious and concerning corollaries are that state
| capabilities eventually become easy to obtain for non-state
| terrorist groups and, later on, unbalanced individuals. Consider
| what ISIS would have done with these, and then think about what
| the unabomber would have done.
|
| I'd fully expect this particular company to face multiple hurdles
| in actually exporting any of these missiles. They might not be
| able to actually deliver at the quoted price-point. China might
| not permit it, due to the political blow-back. Israel and the
| U.S. obviously have an interest in making sure none of these
| missiles wind up in Iranian hands. The execs of this company are
| probably feeling a bit like a target has been painted on their
| heads right now.
|
| However, controlling technology like this is ultimately a game of
| whack-a-mole. If this company fails, gets regulated, decapitated,
| sucked up by the Chinese military, etc., ten other companies will
| pop up all over the place that can produce the same thing or
| better, _cheaper_. There 's also a supply chain of components
| behind this company that can now export critical parts to those
| building their own. We've simply reached (or are about to reach)
| the point where missiles of this sort can be made very cheaply.
|
| Here's hoping missile defence gets better and cheaper _fast_.
| fasterik wrote:
| Relevant philosophy paper: "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis" by
| Nick Bostrom [0].
|
| In that paper, Bostrom floats the idea that it might be in
| humanity's best interest to have a strong global government
| with mass surveillance to prevent technological catastrophes.
| It's more of a thought experiment than a "we should definitely
| do this" kind of argument, but it's worth taking the idea
| seriously and thinking hard about what alternatives we have for
| maintaining global stability.
|
| [0] https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Cheap hypersonics don't threaten global stability, they
| threaten global hegemony. Which is really what I suspect irks
| most people afraid of them.
|
| We've seen a shift towards cheap offensive capacity that
| gives middle powers or even smaller actors the capacity to
| hit hegemons where it hurts, very visible in Ukraine and the
| Middle East now. This leads to instability only temporarily
| until you end up in a new equilibrium where smaller players
| will have significantly more say and capacity to retaliate,
| effectively a MAD strategy on a budget for everyone.
| denkmoon wrote:
| History would seem to show that hegemony is stability? Pax
| Romana etc
| carabiner wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41305736
|
| No idea why a story about a YC company was flagged.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The future of almost all industries is smart software (costing
| billions to make, but infinitely copyable) and cheap hardware.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Perhaps this will be a larger peace between hypersonic powers
| than the one we've had between nuclear powers.
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